Sekvantoj

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Deasún Mac an Easpaig

...Perhaps the best advocate for Irish is fellow Queens, NY native Des Bishop. Bishop moved to Ireland when he was in his mid-teens and, thus, was exempt from having to learn Irish while in school here. That exemption probably explains Bishop's recently found love of Irish better than anything else: he wasn't turned off the language by the school and exam process.

Bishop is a well known stand-up comedian, which gives him a platform to reach out to those teenagers and 20-somethings, so many of whom detest the thought of Irish. Bishop’s first foray into the mother tongue was an Irish version of the rap single "Jump Around" by House of Pain. This was a big hit with audiences all over the country.

However Bishop took it a lot further last year with his ‘reality’ television series that tracked his efforts to learn Irish in a year and finish up with a whole night of comedy in the language.

"In the Name of the Fada," is great television and with it Bishop has made Irish ‘cool’, to an extent anyway. There’s a lot for the language to overcome, but if somehow someone can convince the staid folks in charge of setting education policy – and Bishop is working on this – then maybe the language.